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As long as we’re pointing out milestones, I want to call everyone’s attention to Life of Convenience. Our good friend J Clark is celebrating his 50th strip with a FULL WEEK of “Convenient” action. LIVE action as it were. These strips are all being made with photographs featuring the real-life stars of the strip. It’s a really cool idea and you need to check it out!

I am looking forward to a weekend of fun. My good friend and fellow blogger Nick is turning another year older on Saturday. I am helping him celebrate by honoring him with my presence. Birthday presence.

What? …presents? …yeah, right.

::runs to store::

Anyway, we are going to see Mike Doughty in MN and plan to generally have a kick ass time.

This isn’t me trying to be a big shot or anything. I just like celebrating milestones.

I checked Theater Hopper’s statistics for the month of November and we posted our biggest number of unique visitors in the history of the site – 170,124.

This blows my mind. It breaks our previous record by about 10,000 hits.

Like I said, this isn’t me trying to brag. And really, when you compare those numbers to some of the other web comics out there – several that even started after Theater Hopper – there’s not a lot of reason to call attention to it. Most sites wouldn’t want to tell you the traffic they do because it might make them look “weak” in face of the “competition.”

I don’t feel that way. I’m only in competition with myself and my prize – my validation – is to make the best comic I can. Of course I want to share my passion with others, so if there’s an audience for it, why not put it out there?

I sometimes think it’s easy to overlook exactly what those numbers mean. Frankly, I’m stunned that there is anyone out there interested enough in what I’m doing not only to visit once, but keep coming back or even mention it to their friends. Theater Hopper is growing because of the dedication and support you’ve shown and I just wanted to thank you for it.

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I think it will interest you to check out our newest sponsor The Fish Institution. The art is exceptionally well rendered – different then how it appears in the banner advertisement. Great pencils and some watercolors. Check it out.

Something that I forgot to mention yesterday was that our online community – that place we lovingly refer to as the THorum – celebrated its one year anniversary yesterday. Finally, I fell like we’re over the hump when it comes to providing a place for Theater Hopper fans to communicate with one another.

The history of the THorum is a long and complicated one. Marred by gross ineptitude on my part, this is actually the third incarnation of the community. Those who have been with me from the start know the story I am about to tell.

When I started Theater Hopper in August of 2002, one of the first things I made sure to have was a forum. I believed strongly that developing a community was key to getting the site off the ground. Initial fans would congregate and then spread word of Theater Hopper to all corners of the internet.

When only 20 or so people signed up after 3 months online, I grew impatient and shut it down.

Hey, don’t blame me! I’m a moron, remember? I was totally naive to the fact that having 500 unique visitors per month wouldn’t necessarily translate into an online community. Remember, I’m the same guy who tried raking in donations and advertisements when I was barely a blip on the radar screen. At that time, Theater Hopper was a pimple on the ass of web comics. I’m happy to say we’ve since moved up to “boil” status.

About 6 months after voluntarily closing the first forum and steadily watching our readership grow, I decided to take another swing at establishing a community. Another forum was forged.

Things went well for a while. We had gathered a little clique and we were online without and problems for a good length of time. That is until a catastrophic server failure totally crippled the site. The database that ran the forum was lost and I nearly lost a year’s worth of blogs. Of course, like a fool, I had never made a back-up of the forum. So it was gone, baby. REAL gone. Strike two in forum world.

Desperate to reconnect with the community that was lost, the third version of the forum was brought to life January 17, 2004 and we’ve been plugging along ever since.

It hasn’t been easy, though. Luckily with the help of my team of administrators and moderators, we’ve been able to keep it up and running without much data loss or obnoxious post whores ruining it for everyone. So my thanks to AdSquirrel, Brian, JClark and MadMup. You’re help has been invaluable.

In the course of our existence, we’ve even been able to implement custom features to make ours a totally unique environment. A web cam portal, The Friday Five, The Danza and The Urkle. Even our own dictionary – or THictionary for the unenlightened – of THorum-specific vernacular! Did you know we did a holiday gift exchange last Decemeber that went off with flying colors? We did, and it was great!

Now before you start thinking that the THorum is some sort of secret society or members only cabal, know that there has never been a more welcoming group of people online ANYWHERE. Friendly and bright. Gracious and insightful. And several of them more hilarious than anyone you will ever meet. My thanks to these THorumites who make our community one that I have looked forward to posting to every day since its inception. Thank you.

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Just wanted to take a quick time-out to say congratulations to Ali Graham for crossing a monumental milestone. As of today, Ali has posted 1,000 strips of his comic HOUSD. It’s an amazing accomplishment and worthy of your attention.

I know you might be thinking to yourself "1,000 comics? Gee, that’s a lot. I don’t know if I could ever read a comic like that. Think about all the stuff I missed!" To that, I say "Don’t worry about it." Ali produces a great comic. Sure, there might be a few inside jokes from time to time, but what’s funny is funny and I know you’ll see where he’s coming from. There’s no reason to feel intimidated.

Actually, there’s REALLY no reason to be intimidated, because today is also the launch date of the HOUSD Wikipedia! So you can get caught up in a flash!

Incidentally, Ali did a guest strip for us back in the day. So if you want a taste of what he’s capable of, check it out here.

A few people were congratulating me last Friday for reaching my 700th comic. Actually, that was a typo because I accidentally counted Wendesday’s “Boo hoo! My computer is FUBAR!” messages as an comic. I’ve made the correct and TODAY’S comic is my 700th – which is mind-numbing to think about.

I think the last time I celebrated the number of comics I posted was 400 or probably 500. But anymore, I think I’m just into celebrating anniversaries. You’ll hear from me again about it on August 5.

We’ll probably be talking about Transformers, too – if you’re interested. Join in and talk to us live!

It’s kind of a long story about how it came into my possession, but I’m auctioning off an 8GB iPhone on eBay and the auction ends around 10:00 PM tonight. So if you’re interested or know someone that might be interested, bid away!

For the love of God, PLEASE bid. The longer this thing stays in my house, the more I want to love it in unnatural ways.